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October 2010

30 October 2010

[The following commentary on California's Proposition 19 - 'the new marijuana law' - was submitted via email by RR reader Paul Emery, News Director at KVMR-FM 89.5 who often comments on these pages. My own views on Prop19 are available here.]

Paul Emery

Thanks George for giving me the opportunity to express my opinion of Proposition 19. Here are some basic observations.

There are striking parallels between alcohol prohibition during the Great Depression and marijuana prohibition during our current Great Recession. The lessons learned from the repeal of Prohibition have a lot to tell us about the marijuana policy choices that we now confront. The Eighteenth Amendment was supposed to put an end to the evils of alcohol. Instead it created a gigantic black market, with unprecedented levels of crime and corruption,

Two main reasons for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1933 were that during the Great Depression there wasn't enough money available for an endlessly escalating war on alcohol, and that it is unsustainable in a democracy to prohibit a substance used by large percentage of the population. Can we afford it now?

To quote Jesse Ventura "When you prohibit something, it doesn't mean it's going away; it means it's going to be run by criminals."

Over a hundred million Americans have used marijuana--more than 40 percent of the adult population. The war on drugs is mainly a war on marijuana. In 2008, police made 850,000 marijuana arrests, with nearly 90 percent of those for possession.

Source: "Crime in the United States 2009," FBI Uniform Crime Report (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice)

If a government’s legitimate use of state power is based on the consent of the governed, then at what point does marijuana prohibition — in particular the federal enforcement of prohibition — become illegitimate public policy?

29 October 2010

The chronicle of the young but mighty Tea Party Movement (TPM) has been started and is being presented as a multi-part series starting in today’s 29oct10 WSJ (here). Because the TPM is truly an American grass roots phenomenon, the recounting of its birth and today’s adolescence is a bit of a mish-mash. The article goes into some detail on the internal mudslinging that inevitably arises out of a multi-factioned and effectively leaderless movement. Some of this has even spilled over to RR (here and here). What we tea partiers are still looking for is those big oil (or substitute your favorite) company checks that will turn our simple heads and march us lemming-like off the ideological cliff. Ain’t America great?!

The nation’s CCO in the White House is now also being referred to as “Hey Dude!” – that’s dude like in dude ranch. Has anyone noticed the real reason why no progressive wants to talk about the Dude’s landmark legislative achievement Obamacare. Recall that this triumph was to reduce deficits, lower the national debt, let you “keep your healthcare provider”, not lead to rationing or functional ‘death committees’, lower healthcare costs (if you’re not indigent), reduce insurance premiums, not destroy the health insurance industry, not drive medical care providers out of the industry, … . As the bill was going through the sausage factory (aka Congress), these were known as blatant lies to everyone in the country except those following socketpuppet Pelosi’s pie-eyed admonition for us to wait until it was passed before anyone could really tell what was in there.

Well, it’s been out for some time now and we’re still discovering new landmines and their ripple effects. I predict that Obamacare’s stench will continue growing until it is (hopefully) repealed. Today only the Republicans want to remind us of this atrocity as they continue to put the damn thing back into the Democrats’ trophy case after every time they sneak it out. Not even the duped acolytes in the lame stream media want anything to do with it.

More of the same can be said about the economic Viagra that was foisted on the nation. Again the Dems don’t want to handle this limp willie, and the few who can, now loudly remind everyone that they didn’t vote for it. Remember the cold panic of what would surely happen to the country if the Chief Dude didn’t stimulate right then and there? Of the $871B, or was it $814B, or …? that was allocated over that winter weekend, the monies have dribbled out ever so slowly in dribs and drabs to fund “shovel ready” projects that even our President later admitted were then non-existent? (This President is really going after FDR’s record on the truth meter.) I’m not sure whether Nevada County qualified for a drib or a drab, but the nearby chart shows how the county has fared by its own accounting. Regardless, our unemployment remains firmly well north of 10%.

Let’s see now, 100K people live in the county, 306M live in the country. That figures to 100K/306M = 0.0003. And 0.0003 times $814B is about $266M. Can you possibly imagine $266M dropped on Nevada County? Getting that much OPM, we wouldn't sober up for two weeks. But to date we have received only about $5M, which is a little less than 2% of our pro rata share. Any way you look at it, we got screwed, blued, and tattooed. But that seems to be the national norm and what next Tuesday’s election is all about.

27 October 2010

It’s hard to take seriously California’s Proposition 19 that would make law the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010. This law would allow all the would be happy people in the state to grow up to 25 square feet of maryjane for fun and profit. Well, the fun part has been pretty well established, but the profit seems to still have a question or two connected with it. But that’s where the comedy starts for those pushing Prop19.

Now before going any further, let me state that I am for the de-criminalization of drugs (here). And if that means that at least the production-to-consumption pipeline of some drugs should be legalized, then let’s puzzle out a good way and do it. Continuing the losing war on drugs has only benefitted the producers (e.g. cartels) and the people in the justice system trying to stop them and their customers. Talk about a perennial jobs act for both sides of the legal divide.

26 October 2010

Yesterday afternoon the Northern Sierra Air Quality Management District held its scheduled Board of Directors meeting at the Helling Library. I attended as the only representative of ‘the public’. Actually, I went there to witness our local AQMD’s deliberation on CARB’s AB32 new diesel regulations that threaten to and probably will drive out of business droves of small enterprises that operate diesel powered equipments at the onesy and twosey levels. They will not be able to afford the modifications to bring their engines up to CARB’s controversial codes.

This agenda item got short shrift because these regulations are a statewide mandate and there is not much that local AQMD’s can do about them. But I was there for the full two-hour plus discussion of the public nuisance issue that has come out of Sierra Pacific Industries’ operation of its electricity co-generation plant in Loyalton. SPI was represented by two of its operating executives.

The biomass co-generation plant is another one of those green projects that has had a hard time getting off the ground. In fact, SPI wants to cut its losses, stop the grief, and sell the plant. The problem is that the Sierra County facility employs twenty people and is an important source of tax revenues for the county. On the surface, burning locally available biomass from the forests to reduce fire danger and generate about 20 megawatts of electricity when operating at capacity seemed like a good idea. But then government stepped in and soon the plant was forced to import a good fraction of its biomass fuel from Sacramento area landfills on the other side of the Sierra.

25 October 2010

Hard to come up with another alternative. Do we stiff the Chinese and then fight them? Or do we stick by our obligations to them as our prime creditor, and become an economic colony of China to pay off our debt? You know, sort of like we were in the 18th century to Britain, to whom we didn’t owe a penny.

Evidence is mounting daily that the California Air Resources Board is grossly incompetent - this in addition to having all the other diseases and ailments that normally infect big powerful government bureaucracies. The SF Chronicle reported (here) over two weeks ago that –

California grossly miscalculated pollution levels in a scientific analysis used to toughen the state's clean-air standards, and scientists have spent the past several months revising data and planning a significant weakening of the landmark regulation, The Chronicle has found.

All this continues to give a bigger lie to the “benefits” of implementing AB32 that our politicians (including our RINO governator) have been ramming down our throats for the last three years. But did this latest revelation cause even a ripple in the propaganda about this landmark command and control legislation?

Today AB32’s backers fear most of all that passage of Prop23 will halt their plans for growing government, increasing taxes, adding to the regulatory burdens for business, and in general taking California into federal receivership as a failed state.

For the few who do pay attention, toting up CARB’s crap on this legislation paints an unbelievable picture of hubris and incompetence. Consider just some of the visible aspects of how this agency has misadministered AB32.

• Lied about then rejected the Legislative Analyst’s Office report on the negative economic impact of AB32;• Employed a self-proclaimed ‘scientist’ Hien T. Tran who lied about his missing doctorate to develop CARB’s draconian diesel diktats based on faulty data and analytics.• CARB’s chairwoman Mary Nichols covered up Tran’s lack of qualifications and erroneous results, apparently because she liked the power it gave her agency to increase its regulatory scope.• Hired Charles River Associates to redo LAO’s work and produce a better result. Then covered up CRA’s report when it reported that AB32 implementation would have a negative impact on California’s economy.• Continued to publish and promote AB32 benefits (especially about “cleantech” jobs and economic impact) that it knew to be either totally false or at best unsubstantiated.• And now it turns out that its internal analytics arm has blown (by hundreds of percent) every important prediction it has made (and the state’s leftwingers have and continue to tout) about the ‘impact’ on California if AB32 is not fully implemented.

One wonders what it will take to do a complete top-to-bottom house cleaning at CARB. Apparently its administrative and technical incompetence is not a factor here as long as the agency keeps pumping out politically consumable garbage that can be sold to its gullible constituencies.

In the meantime, all California voters have to slow down this rogue bureaucracy is Proposition 23. Please inform yourself and vote YES on Prop23, it is the biggest decision since Prop13 that California voters will be asked to make.

(Both RR and NC Media Watch have provided extensive coverage on the shenanigans related to AB32 and Prop23. In addition, Russ Steele’s NCMW is the best local source on all things related to climate change. Search on ‘AB32’, ‘Prop23’, and ‘Proposition 23’.) H/T to RR reader for pointing to the SF Chronicle piece.

23 October 2010

Chancellor Merkel’s very public admission that Germany’s multiculturalism experiment has “utterly failed” is an opportunity, widely taken, to reconsider the various meanings and functions of culture and multiculturalism. Over the last week the thoughtful and thoughtless media have covered the subject from its many sides with the possible exception of what I will attempt to explore here. Specifically, no one wants to penetrate that last layer of political correctness and ask what kind of ‘rights’ should people have to monocultural environments of their choice.

I covered much of the dynamics of multicultural societies and the problems of their governance in ‘Liberty’s Twilight’, and here I build on those arguments with which I assume the reader is familiar. But now we address monoculturalism.

The prime function and possible benefit of a culture to its adherents is a stable social life that may range from a stasis of creativity to creative liberalism (in the classical sense). A strong culture allows effective and broad-based prediction of behavior, and maximally uses such widely applied social expedients as shame and shunning to enforce its behavioral norms. The requirements for institutional policing are minimized in such a monocultural society because in essence each member is a natural and ubiquitous enforcer of such norms.

In collectivist societies a state imposed monoculture is the order of the day that requires the operation of an extensive ‘justice’ system to coerce, corral, and control its citizens to behave within the dictated norms. The intent of such governance is to break down the individual cultures that the regime inherited in its ascendancy, and wind up again with a new and politically correct monoculture. But here, as was in the former USSR, Yugoslavia, and Iron Curtain countries, the resulting monoculture is foreign and repugnant to all but the ruling elite – who among themselves practice their own private culture that is still different from the enforced public one.

As history shows, whenever given the opportunity, people immediately revert to their traditional cultures and seek to gain control of territories, ancestral or otherwise, wherein they would be free to reestablish a more current form of their monoculture. Humans have considered such monocultural environments to be of unequalled value, enough to fight and risk all, even from the most desperate of situations and vantage. Humans have always considered it most important to live and raise their children among other people like themselves.

22 October 2010

This week Germany’s Angela Merkel made an historic pronouncement that will ‘restart German history’ and set the rest of Europe on a new and unknown course. Chancellor Merkel pronounced that in Germany “the approach to build a multicultural society and to live side by side and to enjoy each other ... has failed, utterly failed." What does this portend for Europe, and is this assessment also a look ahead for America?

Because of Germany’s Holocaust history, the country has been very sensitive about its immigration policy that was originally intended to attract much needed ‘guest workers’ to fill its war depleted ranks. George Friedman of Stratfor has an excellent summary of Germany’s immigration history that led to what is now turning out to be a cultural and fiscal crisis for that country. In the fifties Italians, then Spaniards and Portuguese, came to work in the booming German economy. These immigrants stayed, worked, and as their own countries’ economies improved, they went back home as planned.

However, in the 1980s Muslim immigrants, primarily from Turkey, began arriving. And to date very few of them have seen any reason to return ‘home’. Germany’s early response was, ‘OK, then they’ll stay and assimilate into our society, becoming good Germans along the way.’ The reality is that they stayed and, instead, formed insular communities that have minimal cultural contacts, let alone cohesion, with the rest of Germany. They do not learn German, they reproduce at much greater rates than the Germans, have few skills now needed in the German economy, and have become a significant drag on Germany’s generous welfare system.

21 October 2010

Liberal websites like TriplePundit.com tout the “cleantech” investments by venture capitalists (VCs) as the proof in the pudding that a vote against Prop23 is good for California’s economy. There are a couple of serious questions you need to ask before you use this promotional information to decide your vote on the proposition to limit the application of the remaining parts of AB32, California’s draconian ‘leadership’ display of tax, regulate, and control your life in the futile pursuit to affect global warming.

The economically innocent layman is led to believe that VCs are the crème de la crème of shrewd hardnosed conservatives and true believers in free markets. Little is further from the truth. VCs are capitalists who look for maximum bang on their buck for the minimum risk possible. Free markets do not spell low risk, government mandated and managed markets do. The VCs, who supposedly have put $9-11B into ‘cleantech’ investments, are expecting to clean up, not because their investments will do well in free markets, but that they will achieve the next best thing to guaranteed returns when their investees become the suppliers of things and services that California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) deems you must use when AB32 gets fully implemented.

But let’s revisit that much touted $9-11B, ‘the largest cleantech investments in the nation’. Have the VCs really written checks totaling that much? At this point, are they really on the hook to their own investors for that sum? I very much doubt it, and so should you.

It is a puzzle to me why the secular humanists, who will accept nothing but evolution in its classical or neo-Darwinian sense, are so afraid of the Intelligent Design (ID) theory of the cosmos and especially life on earth. In the latest issue of New Scientist (here) their fear manifests itself in the insistence that ID is nothing less than code for Creationism. And that is clearly wrong as we’ll see below.

I don’t think that the evolutionists are stupid in that they can’t comprehend the difference between ID and the Creationists, those who advocate the long-bearded ‘spot creation’ of the universe in some sense of the Judeo-Christian Bible. The evolutionists must harbor a real fear that if ID is taught in schools as a competing theory to evolution, then it will let the ‘god camel’ get its nose under society’s tent – and then the Bible thumpers will triumph and science will go to hell in a handcart.

Not to worry. Let’s take a quick look at what separates evolution from ID.

Evolutionists believe that our universe began with the Big Bang and everything else after that happened with the probabilistic combinatorics that underpins the fundamentals of Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection and mutation – survival of the fittest and all that. The evolutionists are not clear on the causal basis for the Big Bang, and continue with attempts to explain away the necessity for cosmic intelligence through theories like the multiverse that again was most recently argued by physicists Hawking and Mlodinow (here).

20 October 2010

The following talk, purportedly by a high school principal, came via email. I have no idea whether it was actually delivered; there was no citation attached. But that doesn't matter. What matters to me is that so many of us harbor the hope that there are still principals and schools in America that sign up and deliver on the principles outlined so well in this piece.

Our progressive readers will undoubtedly reject most of these ideas for our schools. They will be ascribed as being 'far right' or 'out of the mainstream', or even 'racist'. But is that true if America is supposed to have a so-called 'balanced' political spectrum? What parts of this would a self-described moderate find objectionable?

----------------------------------------------------------------To the students and faculty of our high school:

I am your new principal, and honored to be so. There is no greater calling than to teach young people.

I would like to apprise you of some important changes coming to our school. I am making these changes because I am convinced that most of the ideas that have dominated public education in America have worked against you, against your teachers and against our country.

First, this school will no longer honor race or ethnicity. I could not care less if your racial makeup is black, brown, red, yellow or white. I could not care less if your origins are African, Latin American, Asian or European, or if your ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower or on slave ships.

The only identity I care about, the only one this school will recognize, is your individual identity -- your character, your scholarship, your humanity. And the only national identity this school will care about is American. This is an American public school, and American public schools were created to make better Americans.

19 October 2010

The October luncheon meeting of the Nevada County Republican Women Federated was again held at the Alta Sierra Country Club and was well attended by its large and growing cohort of members and associate members of which I count myself. Attending with me was my friend and fellow blogger Russ Steele of NC Media Watch. We sat with our wives who are both paid up members of that most dynamic of the county’s conservative political organizations. A definite draw for the meeting was Congressman Tom McClintock and NC Treasurer/Tax Collector candidate Tina Vernon.

The Rebanes have been longtime supporters of Tom McClintock and consider his brand of politics about the only acceptable kind that will sustain our Republic. Tom’s extemporaneous talk was full of all kinds of data, information, and historical vignettes. An amazingly well read and reasoned man, listening to him is both educational and uplifting. Despite the unadulterated crap that is coming out of Washington, this congressman does a good job in convincing his audience that the situation can be saved.

Among McClintock’s talking points were –

• The Tea Party movement is deep and mainstream America whose principles are supported by a majority of Americans made up of 60% Republicans, 20% Independents, and 20% Democrats.• For $300K each, the feds created/saved some 10,000 jobs in California according to their own statistics. The not so amazing thing about these jobs is that the overwhelming number of them were in the public sector, and of those over 90% were in zip code 95814 (aka Sacramento).• Speaking of our state’s capitol, Tom said that there are more good people to work with in Washington than in Sacramento.• The federal global warming cap n’ tax bill has “near unanimous opposition” in Congress and is not going anywhere. (I guess they’re waiting for California’s AB32 to show the way.)• Even though gaining Republican control of the Senate may be a tough call, the almost assured control of the House will allow Republicans to short circuit Obamacare, follow-on stimulus bills, student loan federalization, and the so-called financial reform by not passing the enabling legislation required to fund their implementation. Repeal and revision of these legislative obamanations may have to wait until 2012.

In short, many things from Washington are bad, but they’ll get better after November. One might even say that things are looking up.

In her turn Tina Vernon gave a very heads up summary of the position for which she is a candidate, her credentials, and proposals. She comes across as a capable professional who will give her opponent Dai Meagher (whom I support) a good run for his money. This Thursday noon at the National Hotel both candidates will be the featured program at the Nevada City Rotary Club luncheon. I think we the people of Nevada County have that position well covered.

Just a rung short of a ladder is the most charitable way I can characterize the attempt by a locally loud leftwinger to proclaim that he has finally found the evidence to nail Mark Meckler, one of the national coordinators of the Tea Party Patriots. Here’s the cited ‘proof’ in the hard-left Mother Jonesarticle that caused this worthy to post the following comment.

Looks like a number of Tea Party "first founders" were right about Mark Meckler, check out this story for details: http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/10/tea-party-mark-meckler-herbalife Mark Meckler... running the Tea Party Movement like a Pyramid Scheme to line his pockets. Seems those on the inside of the Tea Party that posted here are correct. Time to wake up... Mark Meckler has been using the Tea Party for personal power and personal gain.

The comment was posted under ‘Stan Meckler Responds’ which has been a gathering point on RR for some disaffected TPP members and their progressive cheering section. The comment is also a fine example of how the progressive mind (mal)functions, and what passes for evidence for such people. For this reason I have included this example in the Liberal Mind category - it really is an Exhibit A that reveals the power of their thinking. Illuminating!

18 October 2010

On Friday morning (15 October 2010) the Babenhausen Veterans and Friends were welcomed by Babenhausen’s mayor (Burgermeisterin Gabriele Coutandin) into its city council chambers specially configured for the long-planned ceremony. Twelve of us former/retired Army officers along with our wives had returned to the duty station where we all served in the early 1960s. Our artillery unit was based in the Kaserne (military compound) just outside of town. Over the years this forward base housed 'STRAC' artillery units (two hours from combat, 24/7) whose mission was to plug the Fulda Gap about an hour or so to the northeast.

The main Kaserne facilities were built in 1901 on the site of a historical military base that goes back to the 18th century. One of the things we found out on this trip was that Babenhausen (which is in Hessen) was the home of the Hessians that Britain used in our Revolutionary War. And it was these same Hessians that General Washington crossed the Delaware River to rout on Christmas Eve 1776 and thereby change the course of the war which until then had been going poorly for the Americans.

The local count in the area that included Babenhausen ran into money problems with a noble lady he was pursuing in the 1770s. He had this finely trained regiment of Hessians at Babenhausen which appeared to have some value to King George III of England. (Recall that old George was really a German and that the court language of England in those days was German. English had yet to become a language of culture and learning in Europe. Everyone who was anybody spoke and corresponded in either French, German, or Latin with their equally uppity peers.) Anyway, the good count dropped a note to the King and a deal was made wherein the Hessian unit was literally ‘sold’ to England, which then shipped them off to fight its unpopular war du jour in America.

14 October 2010

We arrived in Germany last Friday, flying British Airways from SFO to London to Munich. There we rented a car and took off into the countryside heading for southern Bavaria to attend the birthday gathering of a longtime friend we have known for 50 years. About 35 people, most of whom we know, from two extended families joined us in the spa town of Bad Wörishofen. The Germans sure know how to celebrate such events, and our ears were thrown into full immersion in German within hours of getting off the plane. Everyone seemed to talk faster than we could listen.

We were there for three days and took a lot of opportunities for extended conversations about what’s going on. The German government is beginning to get more and more worried about the Muslim settlers in their country, or as they put it, the “non-assimilation problem”. For the first time we saw severely covered Muslim women in some smaller towns. Previously, they were only visible in the bigger cities. On TV the Interior Minister was giving interviews talking about how the old assimilation programs have not worked, and that there is great urgency to come up with something that might put a dent into the growth of insular Islamic communities.

We found out that the problem was abetted from the start by the German bureaucrats themselves. By far, most of Germany’s Muslims are from Turkey. Some years back when Germans wanted to provide schooling for the Muslim children, the Turkish government offered to sell the German schools secular Turkish school books (Turkey has been a secular Islamic country since Ataturk overthrew the Ottomans earlier in the 20th century). The Germans refused the books on account that they were not produced in the EU. So the Islamic schools in Germany were taken over by the local imams who, of course, were of the ‘Islam will conquer the world’ ideology. And since then the Turkish kids have been going to schools in Germany, funded by the German government, and run by radicalized imams. No matter where one encounters it, government is government.

09 October 2010

[This is the submitted form of my regular column which appears in today’s (9oct10) print and online editions of The Union. I have posted other thoughts along this theme in The Great Divide category.]

Essayists and political commentators have been musing about the size and cohesion of America for decades, but in recent years the intensity and frequency of such articles has increased. And since Barack Obama’s priorities and programs became clear, there is now an ongoing discussion in the public media about whether and how the United States should proceed toward a more manageable configuration of jurisdictions, or even sovereign nation-states. These thought provoking essays appear in a broad range of publications from the Wall Street Journal to the periodic journals of public policy institutes and foundations.

In recent years every election season has revealed how markedly fragmented we have become as the country has spilled over the 300 million mark. While our beliefs cover a broad range of tenets, these have more and more bunched themselves towards opposite ends of the political spectrum. According to latest polls, about 40% of Americans identify themselves as conservatives, about 20% as liberals, and the remainder settle in the indeterminate middle.

What makes this ideological division historically critical is that it occurs during a time when our country is under an unimaginable debt burden incomprehensible to the large majority of its citizens. It has unfunded obligations beyond any reasonable means of paying them down, an enormous annual deficit that must be bankrolled by foreign loans, and an educational system that has already produced two generations of voters who have little understanding of the country’s problems, and are without skills to compete for wealth producing jobs.

The left, beginning with President Obama, is convinced that raising taxes and increasing regulations this time will not reduce government revenues as it has in the past. This explains their adamant promotion of such economy killers as California’s AB32 and the upcoming massive tax hike in January. The President is on record promoting such hikes primarily “for the purpose of fairness.”

And if we add to this policies that include targeted bailouts and takeovers of corporations, the growth of governments, destructive trade wars to ‘save jobs’, and on and on, we see a country with two heads. One wanting to go from where other nations are retreating, and the other saying that America should regain its capitalist roots and become competitive on the world markets with a newly educated workforce. Contrary to last Saturday’s union “mandated” leftwing demonstrations on the Washington Mall to promote socialism, most Americans feel strongly that we need less government in our lives not more.

So today we read journals like Chronicles from the Rockford Institute that devotes its October issue to ‘the secession solution’. Therein Emory University philosopher Donald Livingston reviews the problems with our size, population segments with widely differing worldviews, and the effective loss of representative government. He cites our Founders’ ideas and prescriptions of how the individual states would keep the federal government from becoming the “Leviathan” described by Hobbes.

Few of us were taught that prior to Abe Lincoln’s suppression of the War for Southern Independence, much of our country was shaped by parts of existing states seceding in order to preserve the republicanism intended by the Founders and written into our Constitution.

Since the popularly known Civil War, power has steadily passed from the states to a ballooning central government that grows more and more out of touch with its several states. And now, with the fiscal insolvency of our largest states, this concentration of power has grown into a rout that promises to leave the states little more than lines on a map.

Author Kirkpatrick Sale (Human Scale) cites statistics on the size versus beneficial governance of the world’s countries, and proposes what he modestly calls ‘Sale’s Law of Government Size’. This states that “Economic and social misery increases in direct proportion to the size and power of the central government of a nation.” We may want to take a look around, do another body count over the last couple of centuries, and think about that.

In the meanwhile, we prepare for elections that will set our course as far as we can see into the foggy future. My own mind puzzles over our headlong rush to replicate the mistakes of the Great Depression as we await January and the largest tax increase in living memory. Why are we doing this? And then I remember, it is all “for the purpose of fairness.”

George Rebane is a retired systems scientist and entrepreneur in Nevada County who regularly expands these and other themes on KVMR, NCTV, and Rebane’s Ruminations (www.georgerebane.com).

06 October 2010

The local blogs and my emails have been buzzing with questions and charges of how non-profit 501c3 organizations (like SBC) and private California corporations (like CABPRO) should deport themselves. Apropos such organizations, attorney Barry Pruett (Inside NC Politics) has given good tutorials on the relevant sections of the tax code. My problem with the Sierra Business Council arose during recent KVMR commentaries and on-air Prop23 discussions with Mr Steven Frisch, president and CEO of SBC.

In my mind the situation was pretty clear and simple. SBC gets a big hunk of its funding from government grants that are dispensed from the federal government’s general fund into which all the country’s taxpayers pay. SBC says it spends these monies in support of various federal and state environmental programs. And it follows that the more complex and extensive the regulatory environment is for such programs, the more SBC can propose to do and then receive more funding from its government and institutional sources.

If Prop23 fails, California will feel the full fury of AB32. Newly minted carbon control, monitoring, and enforcement regulations will multiply like fleas and ticks after a warm summer rain. It will be a windfall for NGOs like SBC. As a salaried employee of SBC, it is in Mr Frisch’s self-interest to promote the continued relevance and funding of his employer and his employment. So it is natural for Mr Frisch to appear at as many public forums and media outlets as possible speaking against Prop23 – in doing so, he is simply a professional singing for his supper.

My point here is that when he does make such statements, his audience should know his self-interests in the matter. In my view, he should not pass himself off as just another concerned private citizen purveying debatable ‘information’ about AB32’s effect on California’s economy. Now, our local leftwingers are opposed to Mr Frisch (and anyone else) having to make such disclosures, and KVMR has made it clear that it also felt it was wrong of me to point out SBC’s relationship to the implementation of AB32. In fact, their position was that the money trail from the American taxpayer to the SBC coffers was only an unsubstantiated opinion that I hold.

Having said all this, the local left has countered with questions about CABPRO which is a private California corporation that espouses publicly stated conservative positions, causes, and candidates as it is allowed by law. All this has been done in a so far successful rush to divert attention from the blatantly progressive SBC that, I believe, promotes liberal causes under the guise of a publicly funded (government and tax deferred grants, and tax-deductible contributions) non-partisan organization. As the wizard said, ‘Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!’

I suppose all this is just local politics in action. And I again remind the reader that I am a member and former board member of CABPRO. However, in these commentaries I speak for myself as a private citizen and without the approval and/or endorsement of CABPRO.

04 October 2010

Apropos to the Terror Alert issued yesterday in Europe and America (US State Department) - all American tourists should "be vigilant" for terrorist attacks across the continent - notification of this response came to us from a friend in Great Britain. We are about to take off for a short European holiday and our friend wanted us to know that the British were not going to sit idly by, but would instead mount a proactive defense which has all the earmarks of a well thought out plan that is bound to materially contribute to the safety of the nation. I, of course, am more than hopeful that the other EU countries on the Continent will pick up on this grass roots innovative approach. Judge for yourself.

WALK NAKED DAY - Don't forget to mark your calendars.

As you may already know, it is a sin for a Muslim male to see any woman other than his wife naked and if he does, he must commit suicide. So on Saturday at 1 PM, all British women are asked to walk out of their house completely naked to help weed out any neighbourhood terrorists.

Circling your block for one hour is recommended for this anti-terrorist effort.

All patriotic men are to position themselves in lawn chairs in front of their houses to demonstrate their support for the women and to prove that they are not Muslim terrorist sympathizers. Since Islam also does not approve of alcohol, a cold 6-pack at your side is further proof of your patriotism.

The British government appreciates your efforts to root out terrorists and applauds your participation in this anti-terrorist activity.

God bless the British!P.S.. It is your patriotic duty to inform others. If you don't send this to at least 1 person, you're a terrorist-sympathizing, lily-livered coward, and are possibly aiding and abetting terrorists.

[update] Some of you may be wondering what happened last Saturday on the Washington Mall. The One Nation rally was sponsored by the far left organizations which were reported here and here. One of the more ardent sponsors of the rally that did not get top billing was the Communist Party USA; here is some of their chilling policy in their own words. The sparse turnout consisted mostly of mandatory attendance, required and bussed in by the unions (as reported by union leaderships). And hereare some pictures that you probably will not see on the lamestream media. (H/T to reader)

03 October 2010

Dai Meagher and Tina Vernon are the two candidates running for Nevada County Treasurer.

Over the last few weeks there have been some rumors that Dai has had a tax lien in his financial past. I asked Dai about this, and he confirmed to me that this indeed was the case, and the only such event in his 22 year business history. In 1995 he was notified by the California Franchise Tax Board of a $2,500 tax lien against him which he resolved to the benefit of his creditor. In sum, all debts were settled within four months of notification and no creditor was stiffed.

On the other side it turns out that Ms Vernon also has a financial event of note that to my knowledge she has yet to reveal, particularly to her endorsers. The public record shows that Ms Tina Marie Gulizia (Ms Vernon’s maiden name) of Reno, Nevada filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on 18 June 1996 (case #9631192), Judge “GWZ” presiding, status “Discharged” which means that she was “released from the obligation of all (her) debts which were proved in the proceedings” (Black’s Law Dictionary).

This coming Thursday 7 October 2010, at 8pm in the Grass Valley city hall chambers both candidates will appear at a candidates forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Western Nevada County.

Full Disclosure: I am a supporter of Dai Meagher, CPA for County Treasurer, and a contributor to his campaign.

[4oct2010 update] I received this documentation via email from Dai Meagher. Download Tina Vernon (aka. Tina Marie Gulizia) Bankruptcy . YubaNet ran this as a news item with Tina Vernon's response. This afternoon Dai Meagher released this statement regarding Ms Vernon's bankruptcy. Also today The Union decided to pick up on this story (here) and promised to expand on it in tomorrow's print edition.

02 October 2010

[This is President Obama’s 2oct10 weekly radio address with my commentary annotated in blue italics. All emphases are mine.]

Over the past twenty months, we’ve been fighting not just to create more jobs today, but to rebuild our economy on a stronger foundation. Our future as a nation depends on making sure that the jobs and industries of the 21st century take root here in America. And there is perhaps no industry with more potential to create jobs now – and growth in the coming years – than clean energy.

With alarm we have watched the kind of “stronger foundation” that you and yours have started fashioning for our country – it is not an American foundation, but one that today is uniquely yours. Jobs and new industries have always taken root in America. In fact they have sprung from the fertile soil of America’s creativity, liberty, and firm knowledge that the most generous of rewards are retained by those who successfully manage their entrepreneurial risk in free markets. There are many other sectors than ‘clean energy’ for which generous investments and their attendant jobs are waiting. These include water, sanitation, agriculture, bio-technology, robotics, machine intelligence, transportation, and healthcare. All of these, and clean energy in its time, will bear more fruit and quicker when government lifts its heavy tax and regulatory burdens and promises a known, open, and stable playing field.

For decades, we’ve talked about the importance of ending our dependence on foreign oil and pursuing new kinds of energy, like wind and solar power. But for just as long, progress had been prevented at every turn by the special interests and their allies in Washington.

The “special interests” have been those in behalf of the American citizens and the industry that has supplied them for decades with the world’s most abundant and cheapest energy to power our homes, farms, and industries. Our growth, quality of life, and security have all been dependent on the success of such special interests. Long may they wave.

So, year after year, our dependence on foreign oil grew. Families have been held hostage to spikes in gas prices. Good manufacturing jobs have gone overseas. And we’ve seen companies produce new energy technologies and high-skilled jobs not in America, but in countries like China, India and Germany.

Jobs have not left America because of our dependence on foreign oil. Jobs have gone and continue to go overseas because the American worker has been dumbed down by two generations of union dominated state education monopolies in which multi-culturalism and puerile self-esteem have replaced the curricula of science, math, and history. In the workplace – public and private – every sector that has fallen under the grip of unions has suffered and seen its productivity shrivel. Overseas, formerly autocratic governments are loosening their grip and allowing hundreds of millions of workers to leave farms for new factories that out produce ours and are raising the quality of life for billions of people. All the while our socialists demagogue workers’ rights to produce less, in greater comfort, for more pay. We are reaping what we have sown, and the trade wars now in the planning stages will bring home to all the fantasyland future you are architecting for us Mr President.

[This piece was recorded as my regular bi-weekly commentary on KVMR-FM 89.5 and broadcast on 1 October 2010.]

There is more to be said about John Kerry’s assessment of voters earlier this week. For openers, it’s rare that Senator Kerry and I agree, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to balance the record. In a measured and thoughtful statement Kerry stated that, “We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or truth or what’s happening.” These words came across as a lament on how the Democrats’ message on the economy was being received, or not, by the constituency that powered the liberal landslide of 2008.

Kerry’s words were immediately taken to task by both the right and the left, but for different reasons. Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review, lambasted Kerry for underestimating the intelligence of and talking down to the American voter. It was a lightly veiled outrage designed to highlight Kerry’s recent problems of being viewed as a Boston patrician who is used to surveying the country from the Palatine heights. Lowry’s implied point was that the American voter is plenty smart, at least as smart as needed to see through progressive policies designed to fundamentally transform the country.

From the progressive website Salon, it was author Rick Shenkman who wrote that “Kerry is right: Americans are ignorant”, and then advised the senator, “But that doesn't make it smart politics for him to say so -- in an election year, no less!” Mr Shenkman also runs what is advertised as a non-partisan “social networking site expressly designed for politics”. So he should know when he peels off a pile of voter knowledge statistics showing how ignorant the rank and file voter is. I tend to agree with Shenkman because research from both the federal government and several prestigious institutes give solid backing to such reports.

01 October 2010

This week I was at a public meeting with a large concentration of very liberal people. The topic of the meeting had heavy political and ideological overtones, so many of the conversations around the room involved people opining about the mindsets typical of the ‘other side’. I overheard one particularly loud snippet that reminded me of an entire genre of how the liberal mind views government funding of visible projects and programs, and how that relates to what we earn and own.

The comment paraphrased was “… and if they complain so much about Obama’s stimulus funding, how come they don’t mind driving on the street newly paved with those stimulus funds?” Similarly, most of us have heard, “… they oppose and complain a lot about the cost of social programs, but we don’t see them sending back their Social Security checks or denying their Medicare payments.” When one of these progressive bon mots is rolled out, all parties to the conversation usually share a laugh and knowingly nod at this ultimate characterization of conservative hypocrisy. With the liberal worldview again confirmed, life can go on.

What gives rise to this staple of fractured logic is the progressive’s beliefs about wealth generation, taxation, and property ownership all wrapped in a profound ignorance of human nature. At the start, your earnings belong first and foremost to the government at whose pleasure you are allowed to live in your house and work your job (remember, government ‘creates’ jobs). Since no liberal can conceive of a maximum tax rate for monies extracted from you by force (formally known as tribute), then logic dictates that government simply leaves you with what it determines should suffice for your remaining expenses. And that amount is arrived at by taking into account all the goods and services the government deigns to provide you.

So in the liberal mindset, you never paid for Medicare or paving the street. The deductions from your wages and your quarterly checks to the IRS are simply accounting devices. It is the government retrieving what was theirs to begin with, and you benefit from the government’s largesse as it provides you with these goods and services. Therefore, if you don’t like the government spending its monies on this or that, you should simply not partake in what is offered to you. If you bitch and moan and still belly up to the government trough with everyone else, you are then an ignorant, ungrateful, and hypocritical oaf who knows not from whence all manna flows. To a liberal, it is as clear as that - next case please.

In the event that some liberal eyes may have strayed to these words, let me offer a view from another logic, or for some, even a different universe. The conservative/libertarian mind, especially if tinged with free market capitalism, views the government as a necessary evil required to minimally structure society so as to formalize and enforce a broadly understood and accepted social contract based on a seminal set of rights (see Bastiat Triangle). Government’s limited powers must derive from its citizens who are the creators and producers of wealth that first and foremost belongs to them. These citizens agree to surrender to the government a minimal portion of their power and wealth so that it can be pooled with that of others to provide for the minimal necessities of common good.

Government must always be viewed as an incipient evil, to be constantly watched and monitored lest it becomes a tyrant and burden on people’s lives. History is mostly the story of governments out of their citizens’ control; and today American governance is writing another sad chapter of that story. Part and parcel of that chapter is that our government now demands a constant and growing stream of tribute from us. It is we and our children, those who are not state employees, who must provide the wherewithal to pay for Social Security, the first responder, the paved street, and all their wages, benefits, taxes, and pensions of the growing legions of state employees. And we do that whether we approve of the spending or not.

But once that money is spent, its product or service belongs as much to the conservative as to the liberal. (In fact, if polling history and voting records of transfer payment recipients are examined, it becomes clear that someone other than a liberal has paid more than his pro-rata or ‘fair’ share of the chuck holes filled and fire stations built.) Seen in the best light, it is the free citizen who gave from the sweat of his brow to an overwhelmingly inefficient, indifferent, and powerful bureaucracy for the little that is eventually returned to him. Therefore that citizen, who with what freedoms remain and who funds the ruling class, gets to grouse and use all that he has paid for.

It is this gulf between the liberal and conservative worlds that is seldom crossed.

(This and other essays on the workings of progressive and collectivist minds are found in ‘The Liberal Mind’ category on the right side of this page.)